1. ‘We must reckon as if there were no books in the world’
(Giambattista Vico, New Science,
1725)
OA Advocacy and the
Future of Scholarly
Publishing:
or, What are the Digital
Posthumanities?
Gary Hall
Coventry University

3. www.livingbooksaboutlife.org
Series editors:
Clare Birchall, Gary Hall, Joanna Zylinska

4. An examination of the licenses used on two of the largest open
access book publishing platforms reveals:
- on the OAPEN platform 2 of the 966 books are licensed CCBY, and 153 CC-BY-NC
- on the DOAB 5 of the 778 books are licensed CC-BY, 215
CC-BY-NC
(Janneke Adema and Gary Hall, ‘The
Political
Nature of the Book: On Artists' Books and
Radical Open Access’, New Formations,

6. ‘Monographs are an intrinsically important mode of
academic production and must not be sacrificed on
the altar of open access.’
‘Adoption of the untrammelled CC-BY licence is
not appropriate for monographs and book
chapters.’
Wickham,
Nigel Vincent, Vice-President for Research &
Higher Education Policy, British Academy , ‘The
Monograph Challenge’, in N. Vincent and C.
eds, Debating Open Access (British
Academy, 2013)

7. The Posthumanities and the Posthuman

8. ‘posthuman theory is a generative tool to
help us re-think the basic unit of reference
for the human in the bio-genetic age
known as “anthropocene”, the historical
moment when the Human has become a
geological force capable of affecting all
life on this planet’ (p5)
Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman
(2013)

10. ‘To speak of the
humanities, then, is to
imply a model of unity
based on a certain idea of
the human, whether as
opposed to the divine
(medieval, scholastic
humanism) or to the nonhuman animal world....
The unity of the university
remains profoundly bound
up with the notion of a
universally valid essence
of the Human’
Samuel Weber, ‘The
Future of the Humanities:
Experimenting’, Culture
Machine 2, 2000

11. ‘The image of the philosopher as the
legislator of knowledge and the judge of truth
– a model rooted in the Kantian school – is
the exact opposite of what posthuman critical
theory is arguing for: post-identitarian, nonunitary and transversal subjectivity based on
relations with human and non-human others’
(p172)
‘This calls for the re-definition of the aims
and structures of critical thought and it
ultimately comes to bear on the institutional
status of the academic field of the
Humanities in the contemporary university’
(p186)
Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (2013)

12. ‘Reed Elsevier, Springer, Wiley-Blackwell, and Taylor & Francis/Informa... publish about 6,000
journals between them’, somewhere between a quarter and a fifth of all peer-reviewed journals.
‘For-profit publishers have a stake in 62% of all peer-reviewed scholarly journals.’
(Ted Striphas, ‘Acknowledged Goods’ , Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 2010)
Some companies enjoy ‘profit margins as high as 53 per cent on academic publishing. That
compares with 6.9 per cent for electricity utilities, 5.2 per cent for food suppliers and 2.5 per cent
for newspapers.’ (Simon Lilley, ‘How Publishers Feather Their Nests on Open Access to Public Money’, Times
Higher Education, 1 November, 2012)

14. ‘Posthumanities situates itself at
a crossroads: at the intersection of
“the humanities” in its current
academic configuration and the
challenges it faces from
“posthumanism” to move beyond
its standard parameters and
practices. Rather than simply
reproducing established forms
and methods of disciplinary
knowledge, posthumanists
confront how changes in society
and culture require that scholars
rethink what they do—
theoretically, methodologically,
and ethically.’
Series Editor: Cary Wolfe
University of Minnesota Press

15. ‘this distinction is crucial to
intellectual property law, as it
amounts to the distinction between
idea and expression, with the
expression as that which can be
protected. Under this logic, such
protection is appropriate because it is the
expression, not the idea or the process of
making, which has the value (value
creation in transaction determined by
consumer market).’
James Leach, ‘“Step Inside: Knowledge Freely Available”.
The Politics of (Making) Knowledge Objects’, in P. Baert and F. D. Rubio
(eds), The Politics of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 2010) p.84.

16. The idea of the modern
author as proprietor first
emerged in Britain in the
eighteenth century. It was
invented by London
booksellers as part of their
struggle against the
booksellers of the
provinces. It still dominates
today.

17. ‘There can be no such thing as free access to academic research. Academic
research is not something to which free access is possible. Academic
research is a process – a process which universities teach (at a fee).’
(Robin Osborne, ‘Why Open Access Makes No Sense’, in N.
Vincent and C. Wickham, eds, Debating Open Access (British Academy, 2013)

19. Pirate… from the Latin pirata (-ae; pirate)… transliteration of the Greek piratis
(pirate) from the verb pirao (make an attempt, try, test, get experience, endeavour,
attack).
In modern Greek… piragma: teasing… pirazo: tease, give trouble
Pirate Philosophy

20. V£R$
O
•.

21. ‘With the rise of the Web, writing has met its photography. By
that, I mean writing has encountered a situation similar to what
happened to painting with the invention of photography.…
It appears that writing’s response… could be mimetic and
replicative, primarily involving methods of distribution, while
proposing new platforms of receivership and readership. Words
very well might not only be written to be read but rather to be
shared, moved, and manipulated...
While traditional notions of writing are primarily focused on
‘originality’ and creativity’, the digital environment fosters new
skill sets that include ‘manipulation’ and ‘management’ of the
heaps of already existent and ever-increasing language’.

22. ‘the conditions for renewed political and
ethical agency... have to be generated
affirmatively and creatively by efforts geared
to creating possible futures by mobilizing
resources and visions that have been left
untapped and by actualizing them in daily
practices of interconnection with others.’
(p191)
Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman
(2013)

23. Open Humanities Press
•
Non-profit
•
Open Source
•
Collective
•
Gifts (rather than sells) Labour
•
Non-rivalrous